Before the Last
by LolaKills
Summary: Something to make him shut up' was the only thing Uryuu thought of when he reached into the back of his memories to find what he had nearly forgotten, but once he started, he started to remember it all.
1. Chapter 1: Where to begin

The skies were calm and easy as a slow breeze moved the clouds. Nothing but tranquility.

"... So," a voice, breaking a silence, emerged from a orange-haired young man eating up on the rooftops with his classmates. Two of them, including the bright–haired youth, spaced off into one side from the other two, that of whom were discussing how to sooner ditch them.

"Hey, Ichigo, uh...," one said, quickly raising his hand to his head to scratch his brown hair. "... Me and Mizuro are gonna head back to the classroom-"

"What?" responded the orange-head, most likely to be Ichigo. "But, Keigo, you didn't even finish your-"

"Sorry, Strawberry! I GOTTA STUDY!" Keigo replied, saluting at Ichigo, and his still lunching companion, and grabbed Mizuro, running through the door that lead back downstairs.

"Since when did Keigo study...," Ichigo blinked, bringing the straw in his drink to his lips, then glanced over to the black-haired male seated in front of him, slowly eating his sandwich.

"Hey, Uryuu, talk much?"

"I could've sworn you told me to shut up and eat just a few seconds ago," Uryuu said quickly, shutting his eyes behind his glasses.

Ichigo sneered, then rolled his eyes, gazing up into the sky. "Fine. I take it back then. No use in making this even more awkward than it already is... It's weird when it's quiet..."

Uryuu sighed a little, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I actually enjoy the quiet, Kurosaki."

"Ah," Ichigo seemed to growl, shifting his weight to his arm that rested on his leg, "not what I was getting at." There was a pause, then Ichigo glanced back up at Uryuu.

"Don't you have some interesting story or something?"

Uryuu blinked, then looked up to Ichigo's raised eyebrow.

"... Maybe one other than the one about your Master and whatever."

The eyes behind the glasses seemed to start searching for words.

"... Hm. I might, but I don't think you're the type to enjoy sappy romance fictions."

"You read romance novels? ... And you sew... are you sure you're a man?" Ichigo smirked.

Returning the smirk, Uryuu retorted smugly, "You'd keep your mouth shut unless you want to consider that cheap school lunch a part of your last meal."

As Ichigo glared off to his side, Uryuu grinned.

"Alright then. It starts off last year..."

Ichigo waited for Uryuu to continue, but he looked to be at a loss of words.

"... Last year?" Ichigo narrowed his eyes. "Wait. Is this a true story or not?"

Uryuu blinked a Ichigo through his glasses, then glanced down. "I'll let you decide once I'm done telling it."

Shrugging, Ichigo leaned in and looked at him intently. "Well, we don't have all day, now, do we?"

Uryuu smirked. "I suppose not. Fine. Last year. It was a normal school day. I was sitting and waiting for the teacher to arrive as the other students talked, gawking around..."

* * *

By the time the bell had rung, everyone had gotten into their seats and the teacher walked in, a tinge of a grin on their face. I remained where I was, slightly curious about our teacher's awkward face.

"Students. You have a new classmate."

Everyone got silent as a young lady, about Miss Kuchiki's height, with short dark brown hair stepped in.

"Everybody, this is Koyuki Harihana."

Koyuki bowed slightly to the class, blushing slightly form the attention. I paid no mind to the girl and plainly watched the teacher point out her seat near the back. As she walked past me, I sensed something odd about this Koyuki girl. There was something, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.

* * *

"Aaah, so you're a little pervert deep down, aren'tcha?" Ichigo grinned maliciously.

Suddenly, Ichigo's face was being pushed into the ground by Ishida's foot.

"As I was saying...," Uryuu sighed, pushing up his glasses as they were sliding down the bridge of his nose. "... I couldn't understand what was so odd about the girl..."

* * *

... so I merely ignored her.

The next day, she came in for class, early, minutes after I had arrived myself.

But only seconds before she walked in, I sensed immense spiritual energy eminating from somewhere. I brushed it off for the time being. I didn't have time to leave and go in search of some random energy source that appeared so suddenly.

As I went through my belongings, I felt someone staring at me. I tried to ignore it, but it began to bother me. Sighing, I glanced up to the only other person in the room who hadn't moved from her spot ever since she walked in.

Koyuki's reiraku was everywhere.

Bewildered, I stared straight at her, wondering how a girl like her could have such tremendous spirit energy.

It wasn't until then that I noticed why she was staring. I really didn't know exactly what to say, so I just blinked, abruptly halting the trance.

I blinked again as her face flashed a pale red, then quietly walked past me to her seat.


	2. Chapter 2: Crossing the Lines

Ichigo stared at Uryuu, a curious look flickering in his eyes as he popped his jaw back in place. "Her reiraku... spirit ribbons? Was it red? Like a Soul Reaper's?"

"No...," Uryuu responded, taking his place, seated, on the ground again. "... It was like any other... just plain. But she had so many around her that she was almost drowning in them. It's like her spirit energy was flowing out of her… just like yours."

Ichigo blinked for a second, then scowled a little. "Well? Keep going. This story's a little interesting."

Pausing, Uryuu grinned. " Well, then-"

But the bell signaling class to start again interrupted him.

Glowering, Ichigo glanced reluctanly over his shoulder. "Ah, damn..."

"I guess that concludes this for today...," Uryuu sighed, getting to his feet and brushing himself off. "We'll continue this sometime later, Kurosaki."

As Ishida made his way towards the door, Ichigo hesitated.

"Hey!" Ichigo jumped up. "I wanna hear the rest! We still have time before the teacher gets to the room!"

The two boys made their way down, a little slower than they probably usually would.

"So, what happened next?" Ichigo asked, glancing at Uryuu, who was a few steps ahead of him.

Uryuu turned his head a little. "Next?"

There was a short silence.

"... Nothing happened next."

Ichigo's eyes narrowed at the back of Ishida's head. "That was a dull story, then."

"I never said that was it," Uryuu smirked.

* * *

"Excuse me..."

It was the middle of lunch and I wasn't doing anything but sitting at my desk, reading, when a quiet voice sounded I my ear. I turned around to see Koyuki standing behind me, biting her lip.

I looked back down to my book. "What is it."

She was quiet for a long minute, the sound of the other students around us talking was the only thing keeping me from staying in the room. I got up, closing my book and made my way to the door. As I did, I heard footsteps trailing behind me.

I found myself walking outside into the quad with my nose stuck in my book and completely forgot that Koyuki was behind me. Reluctantly, I stopped walking and looked at her again.

"This must be important if you followed me all the way out here," I said, raising my eyebrow at her.

Flinching, she quickly bowed her head, her hair falling around her face. "Well, I just wanted to ask you a question."

I sighed, shutting my eyes and closing my book in my hand, pushing up my glasses with the other. "It better not be a stupid one."

"I hope it's not...," she said to herself, but loud enough for me to hear.

"Well, what is it?"

Koyuki only glanced up at me for a second before looking back at the ground.

"... Nevermind," she said suddenly, beginning to walk past me. "It was a stupid question..."

With that, I spun around and grabbed her shoulder, turning her back to me again. "You've wasted enough of my time by following me out here, now ask your question before I get irritated in any way possible," I sneered, watching her eyes dart back and forth between mine.

She had a startled expression in those gray eyes of hers.

Suddenly, I snapped out of it and pulled away. "I'm sorry about that...," I said as calmly as I could, pushing up my glasses again. "I'm in quite a testy mood right now, so I think I'll be going back now..."

Koyuki remained where she was while I walked past her, going back to reading my book where I completely lost my place...

* * *

"Didn't you say this was gonna be a sappy love story or something?"

Uryuu paused in the hallway while he and Ichigo neared the classroom door. Ichigo halted by his side.

"What now?"

"Would you stop interrupting?"

Ichigo scowled. "SO WHAT IF I'M INTERRUPTING YOU? I have questions that need answers!"

Uryuu sighed again. "Just be patient," is all he said in response. "... But now, I think I'll make you wait for the rest."

"WHAT?" Ichigo barked as Uryuu quietly walked in to the classroom ahead of him.

The bell rang again, ending class and school for the day. Uryuu wasn't at all in a hurry to leave, but seemed Ichigo was.

"Just because you want to hear the rest doesn't mean you have to hover over me like that," Uryuu pushed up his glasses after noticing the spikey shadow on his desk.

Ichigo sneered. "Well, you could hurry it up. I don't want goat-face pestering me about being home late again..."

"... Goat-face?"

His bright hair waved in the air as Ichigo rolled his eyes. "Long story... Just come on and finish yours," Ichigo sighed as he turned and started towards the door, Ishida following slowly behind.

* * *

I was walking home and Koyuki was trailing quietly behind me. I really wasn't paying any mind to her. She probably had no idea what her reiraku was, none the less what Soul Reapers, Hollows, and Quincies were. But I found it intriguing that she pursude me so. I decided not to lead to her to my home, so I took a wrong turn along the way, heading back to the school.

When we neared, she ran up to me.

"Um, it's Ishida, right?" she said with a curious, yet nervous face.

I glanced at her, then blinked away. "That's correct."

Koyuki paused briefly. "You know you're going back towards the school?"

Nodding, I pushed up my glasses. "I thought you to be lost, since you were following me like you were."

Suddenly, she stepped in front of me, blocking my path and stared up at me. "You knew I was following you this whole time?"

I wasn't in the mood for such useless chatter, so I just said whatever came to my mind.

"I could sense your spirit energy from a mile away with the way it's just flowing out of you."

She seemed to falter when I said that, her awkward silence a sign of that, but also her spirit energy tensed and decreased slightly.

I only sighed, pushing up my glasses again. "Now, if you'll excuse me," I said, turning my back to her and walking away. "I'll be heading home now."

"Wait!"

Something made me stop. I didn't want to stop, but I did. I turned to her reluctantly.

"You know what reiraku are! That means you can see spiritual entities, right?"

How could she have known that? I was as blunt as possible, yet she already knew. She wasn't a Soul Reaper... Maybe that's all. Maybe she can only see them and that's all. After all, she can't be a Quincy. And it's impossible for her to be a ghost since the people at school saw her, so it was foolish of me even thinking that.

I was staring at her, bewildered, trying to think of an explanation to why she knows this much. She couldn't have just looked things like this up in a book...

Koyuki examined my face, seeing that my slight state of shock was a "yes" to her question, and her eyes lit up. "Then do you know what Quincies are?"

Suddenly, my body was out of my sense of control. I grabbed her shoulders and pinned her against the nearest wall.

"How do you know what they are!" I growled in a low tone.

I startled her again, so she didn't answer. She just stared back, her breath quivering beneath me.

That's when I noticed I had gotten past a barrier that I shouldn't ever cross, a woman's personal space. Last time, I was only on the line of separation, but now, I was too far in to forgive myself. Her face only inches from mine.

There was a burning in my chest. It wasn't that of pain, though... it felt more like...

Abruptly, I released her and made a run for it, not looking back once.


	3. Chapter 3: Never Ending

"So, you just ran away from her?"

Ishida glanced over from his shadow beside the foot of a tree to Ichigo, who was unattentively swinging a large stick from the ground in the air like a baseball bat.

Uryuu sighed lightly as the sound of a bullet train passed a few miles away. "So, I did."

Ichigo gave the branch one last powerful swing, making it fly out into the distance. As he watched it bounce onto the ground far away, he smirked. "A burning in the chest, eh? So this is turning out to be a sappy love story, huh?"

"I told you it would," Uryuu replied, rolling his eyes. "And did you complain? No. So, shut up and let me get to the actual good parts."

* * *

My running had become a slow limp. That's right, Kurosaki, coodinated me had taken too large of a step and too sharp of a turn and barely twisted my ankle to the point of any pressure to it causing me almost unbearable physical pain. I wasn't too far from my place, but still, the "shortcut" I had taken gave me a few miles to retrace. Exhausted, my eyes went towards the sky, darkening to a dull reddish hue that quickly faded to a deep dark blue to the east. The faint glimmer of stars refreshed me ever so slightly, so I continued on my way, my hand feeling the wall beside me that helped me keep my balance.

I didn't notice, but my neck was lowering my head to the ground, and my glasses slipped off from behind my ears and down to the hard cement. A light clink, but I knew that glasses of any sort, whatsoever, making any fall from a a point at any height to a solid object, such as the ground, in this instance, is not good at all.

Not to mention, the time was gradually delaying my reactions.

After the light clink was a loud, thick crunch.

I froze. Time seemed to be at a standstill.

This was the first time I had broke my glasses. Through all the hollows, rough or weak, big and small, countless sparring with my Master, and bullies with raging hormones, not once had I ever had my glasses scratched, smudged, cracked, dropped, or stepped on.

* * *

"… You're such a big dork."

"SHUT UP."

* * *

Quickly, I got down and began to pick up the mangled metal that framed what was left of the glass and stared at it impatiently, thinking that I was in some strange dreamworld and this was all just my imagination overcoming me. Maybe I'd wake up in a second or two. No use...

I got up slowly and began to walk the rest of the way, even slower than I was moments before, feeling strange with only air in front of my eyes and a pocket filled with shards and twisted metal.

* * *

Ichigo slanted his brow at Uryuu. "Wait, you can still see without those glasses?"

Uryuu blinked. "Yes, I can."

"Then why the heck do you wear them all the time? You could always get contacts or something."

An awkward pause consumed about two minutes, but was interrupted my a brief murmur from Ishida.

"... I guess...," Uryuu began, pushing one side of his glasses up, "... they're sort of like a safety blanket to me… like ones that children have. I can't go anywhere without them."

"Huh...," Ichigo sighed, trailing off a little. "... So, what happened next? Did you two kiss and make up?"

Ishida scoffed. "Very funny, but no." Quietly, he brought his hand to his nose to push up his glasses yet again, but he paused. "She caught up to me somehow, and was waiting for me at my house by the door."

* * *

The first thing she noticed was that my glasses weren't on.

"What happened to your-" she started, walking over to me, but I cut in, pulling out the frame.

"It's right here..."

She stared, then grabbed my hand and dragged me inside.

* * *

"I don't know why, but she insisted the both of is glue it all back together since I had literally gone a picked up every single piece of broken glass with my bare fingers." Uryuu chuckled. "I told her it was pointless, being that it was rather silly and that I had no glue in my home, but she still continued, finding a tape dispenser that happened to be laying around the house."

Ichigo grinned a little, about to make a smart comment, but he remained quiet and waited for Uryuu to finish.

But Uryuu seemed expectant of a clever statement from him, like he wanted it. Still, he continued after taking a short breath.

* * *

"So," Koyuki smiled lightly as she started to clean up my hands, cut from all the sharp broken glass pieces I picked up earlier, _after_ she taped together my glasses. "From the way you reacted, I'm guessing you do know about them."

I blinked. "Quincies, you mean..."

She nodded, her hair falling over her eyes, but her smile still visible.

"But how do you know about their existance, Miss Harihana?" I asked her, narrowing my eyes suspiciously.

"I am one."

When she said that, I glared, about to pull away from her. "You can't be! The last surviving Quincy was killed by Hollows!"

Suddenly, she looked up at me, a slight frown on her face.

"But you were his apprentice, weren't you?"

I stared back, but quickly bowed my head. "Preposterous...," I muttered.

At the time, I was in denial of my own self. After what had happened to my master, I denied any relationship to him or Quincies in fear of what the Soul Reapers would do if they found me, while eliminating Hollows behind their backs. But I wasn't about to tell this girl I met from school about such a thing.

"How could you ever associate me with-"

"I saw you the other day."

I watched her with wide eyes as she carefully placed my hand at my side.

"You didn't cleanse that hollow like a Soul Reaper would. You just quickly exterminated it, then went on your way like nothing happened."

So my cover was blown. Oh well.

I sighed, bringing my hand up to my face, then felt nothing on my nose, and frowned. "... So you saw. I guess it was useless for me to lie about it..."

Koyuki blinked, a look of concern in her eyes. "But why do you lie about it?"

* * *

"I explained to her about that and she didn't seem very moved. She told me that doing that was cold and it was as if I were giving up."

Ichigo glance behind him, only to see Uryuu's shoulder. The two of them were sitting at the foot of a tree, each of them on opposite sides, as Uryuu went on.

"Then, what?" Ichigo said quietly, a little hesitant.

Ishida looked down at his hands, examining the small scars in his fingertips. "Then... then, she left."

Pausing, Ichigo folded his arms and scowled, but didn't say anything. He wasn't to interrupt if Uryuu wasn't finished, again.

"... When she did, I thought about what she said before she left."

"You know... those glasses make you look smart... but without them, you seem kinder."

Ichigo heard a light shuffle behind him and turned around to see Uryuu taking off his glasses.

"Hey, what are you do-"

"The next day, she didn't come to school. I knew why, too. A Soul Reaper came and took her life. I saw it happen. It was like my Master all over again. I didn't do anything but hide.

"I thought about what she said... that lying about it was like I was giving up. I knew I wasn't about to give up, but when I was thinking, I realised that she was right. Since then, I've slightly open about myself being a Quincy. And whenever I do remember what she said, my glasses come off and I let myself drown in the endless blue sky, knowing she's up there..."

"In the Soul Society, you mean?" Ichigo blinked.

Uryuu nodded once. "Right..."

The two were silent as Ishida just gazed into the distance.

"... Well," Ichigo sighed, getting to his feet and stretching. "That was a... so-so story. Maybe you could work on it or something to make it less boring like all your other stories."

Uryuu didn't flinch. He probably would have thrown his shoe at Ichigo's head, normally, but he didn't.

"Thank you, Kurosaki... for listening."

Ichigo blinked, surprised, then glanced down to Uryuu, who was still looking at the sky.

"It's getting late, you know..."

Silence.

"... That Koyuki chick was right about that glasses thing."

Uryuu shut his eyes.

Quietly, Kurosaki Ichigo shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away.

As Ichigo reached his home, he read the large sign out front in his head. A breeze whistled in his ear as he glanced back in the direction of where he left Ishida Uryuu under that tree.

"Crazy story...," he muttered, then glanced down at his bag. "Oh yeah... I have to get Dad to sign some-wait a sec," Ichigo paused as he looked at his hand inside of a bag that didn't belong to him. "Ah, crap. I must've taken Uryuu's by mistake..."

About to close the bag before he messed anything up, something caught his eye. A light glare in his eyes from something reflecting the sun inside of the bag. Cautiously, he reached back in and picked up a strange pair of distorted glasses, covered entirely by clear tape.


End file.
